University of South FloridaScholar Commons

Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School

11-15-2005

Content Differences Between Print and OnlineNewspapersJessica E. SmithUniversity of South Florida

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Scholar Commons CitationSmith, Jessica E., "Content Differences Between Print and Online Newspapers" (2005). Graduate Theses and Dissertations.https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/868

Content Differences Between Print and Online Newspapers

by

Jessica E. Smith

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts School of Mass Communications

College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida

Major Professor: Kenneth C. Killebrew Jr., Ph.D. Timothy E. Bajkiewicz, Ph.D.

Randy E. Miller, Ph.D.

Date of Approval: November 15, 2005

Keywords: gatekeeping, convergence, shovelware, local news, content analysis

© Copyright 2005, Jessica E. Smith

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Deena Kemp and Erika Llenza for several hours of coding help; thanks

to Norma Smith and Nancy Smith for reading headlines to me; thanks to Dr. Cheryl

Bacon and Susan Lewis for brainstorming and encouraging; thanks to Charles and

Deanne Smith for not asking too often when I’d be done; and thanks to the USF faculty

members who have shaped the way I understand mass communication. Special thanks to

my thesis committee members, Dr. Randy Miller and Dr. Tim Bajkiewicz, and chair, Dr.

Ken Killebrew, for their availability, patience, and guidance through this process.

i

Table of Contents

List of Tables iii

Abstract iv

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Chapter 2: Literature Review 7

Gatekeeping 7

Broadening definitions 13

Framing 14

Television gatekeeping 15

Online gatekeeping 16

Trends in online newspapers 20

Shovelware 21

Interactivity and multimedia use 22

Local news online 25

Chapter 3: Method 29

Chapter 4: Results 36

Chapter 5: Conclusion 46

Limitations 49

Future research 51

References 54

Appendices 65

ii

Appendix A: Print and online sample articles 66

Appendix B: Coding sheet 84

Appendix C: Coding instructions 85

iii

List of Tables

Table 1 Distribution of stories by newspaper 36

Table 2 Comparison of contextual elements between print and online stories 37

Table 3 Elements in common between print and online stories 38

Table 4 Number of stories with types of print elements present 39

Table 5 Number of stories with types of online elements present 40

Table 6 Print reporter affiliation and mean print elements 42

Table 7 Online reporter affiliation and mean frequency of photos and infoboxes 42

Table 8 Online reporter affiliation and mean types of elements represented 43

Table 9 Story geographic emphasis and mean frequency of print elements 44

Table 10 Story geographic emphasis and mean types of elements represented 44

iv

Content Differences Between Print and Online Newspapers

Jessica E. Smith

ABSTRACT

The Internet provides the opportunity to develop a new way to present journalism,

but many scholars say newspaper Web sites do nothing but mirror their print parents.

This study used content analysis to compare the content of stories in five newspapers

with their Web counterparts, and it examines whether reporter affiliation or a story’s

geographic emphasis has a relationship with the story’s amount of contextual elements.

These elements could include photos, graphics, or multimedia or interactive components

online. This approach applied gatekeeping theory to publications that have editions in

two media.

This study examined the five largest newspapers in the South over 14 days,

collecting a sample of 635 stories on the front pages and metro section front pages of the

papers. Nearly all stories in the sample appeared on the newspapers’ Web sites, and story

content was the same 96% of the time. The study found that 85% of print stories were

published with at least one contextual element, but only 58% of online stories had at least

one such element. About a third of the sample had at least one contextual element in

common between print and online versions of a story, while about 20% of the sample had

entirely unique sets of contextual elements in print and online. Newspapers are no more

likely to publish additional contextual elements with local stories than any other type of

v

content. This effort focused on storytelling components; it examined whether print and

Web editions of newspapers tell stories differently—whether they are complementary or

competitive.

1

Chapter 1: Introduction

The Internet provides the technical capability for a user to read an article, examine

its sources, and interact through a natural conduit that other media do not provide. A

newspaper’s Web site can provide e-mail addresses or discussion forums that make

journalists accessible while fostering community discussion. A site can offer audio clips

from interviews, text of government records, and interactive maps that all can change the

way a reader understands a story.

News online provides the opportunity to develop a whole new way to present

journalism, and Jan Schaffer (2001) of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism suggested

that this be done with a “much more interactive toolbox.” Interactivity is one of the things

that gives the Internet value as a medium. Newspapers can provide in-depth stories, and

television gives pictures and sounds. When providers offer these elements online, users

often confront technological limitations. These technical obstacles may be overcome in a

few years, but Web journalism still should be able to offer something more, something

unique now. If interactivity is the Internet’s outstanding characteristic (Morris, 2001), it

seems that online journalism should be taking advantage of it with stories that engage the

reader and with tools such as e-mail links to journalists and officials, documents available

to view, databases, and hyperlinks.

Some media have been slow to use interactive elements, though (Dibean &

Garrison, 2001; Greer & Mensing, 2004; Singer, 2002; Tankard & Ban, 1998). The

current environment has media trying to determine whether online news is

2

complementary or competitive for their operations (Dutta-Bergman, 2004) while

journalists are trying to understand how to work in multiple media platforms (Huang,

Davison, Shreve, Davis, Bettendorf, & Nair, 2003; Killebrew, 2004). Others say the

“high-tech footnotes” (Weinberg, 1996) provided by documents and audio clips with

stories online provide credibility but reduce online journalists to repackagers of news. In

a time when scholars and practitioners have such questions, it seems crucial to examine

the ways newspapers and their Web sites distribute news. Interactivity is a buzz word

used about news Web sites, and the ability for a user to give feedback or choose which

elements of a story to examine certainly distinguishes a story on a site from its print

counterpart. Perhaps an equally popular word for added features of a newspaper Web site

is “multimedia,” a form of presentation that uses audio, video, graphics, or other methods

to give users different pieces of a story. Interactivity and multimedia capability are

integrated features of the Internet, and it is important to understand how online news sites

use these techniques.

Newspapers have a tradition of seeking, gathering, processing, and producing

news in a one-way daily delivery, but the Internet can give users the ability to make the

reporting process more transparent if site visitors can see, hear, or read the sources

reporters relied on. In order to get to a point where sites make full use of the online

functions that make the Web unique, Lowrey (1999) said both journalists and users must

develop new schemas for processing news online instead of viewing it as a modified

version of print journalism. This is an opportunity for newspapers to move past

shovelware—content pushed directly from the print product to a Web page—and convert

stories into forms that make them worthwhile for the online user. Online journalists have

3

no template for accomplishing that goal, however. Greer and Mensing (2004) make an

excellent point: “Newspapers are still working to find interactive elements that function

well in an online news environment” (p. 109). Finding an online model that is valuable to

users and cost-effective for newspapers will not happen overnight, but it is important in

producing print and online media that continue to be viable.

Although many newspapers have separate staffs for their online product, often the

Web site is essentially the same as the print edition (Tewksbury & Althaus, 2000) or has

fewer stories than what appears in print (Peng, Tham, & Xiaoming, 1999; Regan, 1995;

Singer, 2001). With a news hole limited only by the size of a newspaper’s servers, the

Web offers a logical home for more information than appears in the newspaper. A

newspaper Web site that does not differentiate itself from the print newspaper in daily

content has no unique quality to draw users, and without this, a site has no leverage to

make a profit with advertisers or through paid content (Chyi, 2005; Chyi & Sylvie, 1998).

Several scholars (Fortunati, 2005; Pavlik, 1997) suggested that news Web sites

develop in three stages. A first-stage site mirrors its print parent, and sites in the second

stage add some interactive, multimedia, or customizable features. Pavlik (1997) said the

third stage, a rarity at that time, would present new forms of storytelling and a different

understanding of what constitutes a community. A few years later, Fortunati (2005) said

the “‘mature’ site” (2005, p. 30)—one that has mastered multimedia presentation and is

trying to develop or improve its economic return—was a present reality, at least for

European media. A site that has learned to use multimedia techniques, however, may

apply them only sporadically. This could indicate that news sites still do not exploit the

characteristics that make them a new, different medium. The evolution of online

4

newspapers may not be complete, so it is important for scholars to evaluate how news

sites function now to see the direction they might move as online newspapers come into

their own.

Although companies are undoubtedly at the stage of wanting a sustainable return

on investments in all products, online or otherwise, many newspaper sites at first glance

appear to be little more than reflections of the day’s edition with perhaps some standing

extra features. Research suggests that there is an audience for both print and Web as they

currently exist (Dutta-Bergman, 2004), but Weiss (2004) said online newspapers must

reinvent themselves as the novelty of their innovation wears off or risk failure. Online

newspapers are competitors if their content is free shovelware from the print edition, but

news online can be complementary if sites offer different information or features. This

study examines daily news content in print and online editions to determine whether the

editions are competitive or complementary.

At some level, the law of diminishing returns suggests that a newspaper will put

money and effort into its Web presence until the point that more resources would not

improve the financial bottom line, even if the product still could be improved. Shoemaker

and Reese (1996) address the desire of news organizations to efficiently use resources;

the scholars’ media content research fits into a fourth phase of agenda-setting research

(McCombs & Shaw, 1993). Shoemaker and Reese (1996) created a hierarchical model of

influences on media content that includes routines and organizational forces. The

“structural logic” (p. 37) of a newspaper’s staffing structure and reporting norms shape

the stories that readers see. If a newspaper’s workflow calls for reporters and their editors

to produce stories, editors and designers to produce display type and add photos and

5

graphics, and Web editors simply to format that work for the Web, users will see a mirror

of what appears in print. This structure creates an assembly line mentality, and

Shoemaker and Reese suggest that the person at the end of the line, the editor—or in this

case, the Web editor—may have little investment in the final product. If Web editors can

ask reporters for source materials, such as documents and taped interviews, they face the

challenge of creating a presentation that was not “grown up in an online medium,”

(DeJean, 1995). This kind of storytelling in effect deconstructs a story and presents the

whole as well as its parts. It can require several hours to produce one story like this

online, and the outcome is a story that might be different than one produced by a Web

editor involved with the reporter in the beginning. The final Web content may depend on

the employee structure the organization has in place for its newspaper and Web site.

The content that makes it onto a newspaper site might be only part of what the

print edition offers that day, which is a process recommended by the online editor of The

Christian Science Monitor (Regan, 1995). Singer (2001) also found that print editions ran

more than twice as many stories as their corresponding online editions. Both the stories

selected from the print edition to be posted online and the elements such as photos and

graphics selected to go with those stories undergo some kind of gatekeeping process to

determine whether they will move from the print medium to the Web. Gatekeeping, one

of the oldest mass communication theories, has interesting implications for online media.

Singer also found a strong local orientation of online newspapers, which makes

sense considering that staff writers would produce most of the content about a

newspaper's metropolitan area. A newspaper might find it relatively simple to post wire

stories from the nation or region, but its local content is the product that other news

6

sources do not offer. In theory, a newspaper only has to invest its employees’ time into

posting extra resources online with the local stories that ran in the print edition. This

creates a situation where, as Shoemaker (1991) said, “cost becomes value” (p. 23).

This study compares the content of stories in selected newspapers with their Web

counterparts and examines whether locally written stories are more likely than non-local

stories to have additional content. Additional or different content could include photos,

graphics, or multimedia or interactive components. The results of this study should offer

a picture of how industry-leading newspapers use their Web sites and whether users can

find unique information there. The results have implications for models of newspaper

Web sites and discussions about paid content online, so it is important to examine

whether print and Web editions of newspapers tell stories differently—whether they are

complementary or competitive. This effort focuses on storytelling components and

should provide a clearer picture of any relationship between newspapers’ practice of print

and online gatekeeping.

This study continues in Chapter 2 with a review of relevant literature about the

areas of gatekeeping, online newspapers, and local news. Chapter 3 describes the method

and reliability of this content analysis, Chapter 4 provides results from the study, and

Chapter 5 includes conclusions, limitations, and suggestions for future research.

7

Chapter 2: Literature Review

This study draws from work in several areas. Traditional gatekeeping literature

examines why particular news items make it to the public. Studies about online news

explore unique features of Web delivery and how it matches up with older media. The

intersection of these areas provides excellent context for this study.

Gatekeeping

Gatekeeping has a long history as a mass communication theory, and the

definitions of who or what can be a gatekeeper and the scope of the gatekeeping process

have shifted through the years. The concept of information gatekeeping began with

Lewin (1947), who described forces that acted on the selection of groceries and produce

as they moved through channels to the family dinner table. He said decisions about food

fall to “persons in ‘key positions’” (p. 143) who must weigh opposing forces, such as the

cost and desirability of particular types of foods, and select what to bring home. A gate

was any area in the channel where the forces changed enough to make that a decisive

point for making it through the channel, and Lewin said gatekeepers or impartial rules

govern the gates.

The first study that applied Lewin’s gatekeeping concept to mass communication

was White’s (1950), and his approach established a focus on the individual as gatekeeper

in mass communication literature. In White’s study, a mid-career wire editor at the

Peoria Star (Reese & Ballinger, 2001) saved all stories that he rejected from three wire

services in one week and recorded why he did not select the stories to run. White found

8

that “Mr. Gates” was able to run about one-tenth of the 12,000 column inches of copy he

saw and tended to choose stories written conservatively that came across early in the

evening. The study noted a gatekeeping effect both from individual preferences and

constraint by the organization’s production process. If Mr. Gates was representative of

other wire editors, White concluded “that the community shall hear as a fact only those

events which the newsman, as the representative of his culture, believes to be true” (p.

390).

Snider (1967) repeated White’s study with the same wire editor 17 years later to

see whether time tempered Mr. Gates’ approach to news selection. Mr. Gates remained in

the same job at the same newspaper, but his situation changed somewhat in the

intervening time. The city’s evening newspaper took control of the morning paper Mr.

Gates worked for, and the paper had a smaller news hole because it had increased

advertising. The paper used only one wire service in 1966 compared to the three used in

1949. Mr. Gates’ newspaper had to compete with radio and television news, which Snider

said had not been as competitive 17 years previously. Snider studied Mr. Gates for five

days instead of the week White (1950) did and found that Mr. Gates chose about a third

of nearly 2,000 column inches of wire type he saw in 1966. Snider said the wire editor

chose more international war news than any other category of story in 1966, perhaps

reflecting the ongoing Vietnam War, compared to a preference for human interest stories

in 1949. Mr. Gates still chose the stories he liked and thought his readers wanted, Snider

said, adding that the wire service offered and Mr. Gates chose a “better balanced news

diet” (p. 424) in 1966 than they did in 1949.

9

Several other early studies of gatekeeping focused on wire editors and wire stories

(Gieber, 1956; Jones, Troldahl, & Hvistendahl, 1961). Instead of creating a case study of

one editor, Jones, Troldahl, and Hvistendahl (1961) analyzed the state wire content

provided to and run in 23 Minnesota newspapers. They found that the newspapers used

about one-third of the state content provided by the Minneapolis bureau of the Associated

Press and that stories provided just before the newspapers’ deadlines were unlikely to see

print, a finding similar to White’s (1950) gatekeeper’s approach to filling his newspaper.

Contrary to the Mr. Gates studies, Gieber’s (1956) study of 16 telegraph editors found

that their personal opinions about events and people in the news had no effect on their

selection of newspaper stories. The results of interviews, mock story selection, and

analysis of spiked copy in Gieber’s study showed a passive group of gatekeepers, each of

whom was “caught in a strait jacket of mechanical details” (p. 432). He said the driving

force for these editors was simply filling the news hole.

Gieber’s (1956) study aligns with the approach to gatekeeping that Westley and

MacLean (1957) took in their communication model. In addition to parties A and B

passing information through channels, they created C as an intermediary and designated

that as a gatekeeping position. Those gatekeepers “survive … to the extent that they

satisfy [audience] needs” (p. 34). This model uses entire organizations as gatekeepers

rather than individual journalists, who are merely “interchangeable cogs in the media

machine” (Shoemaker, 1991) in this understanding of gatekeeping. Gieber’s approach

also de-emphasizes the importance of the individual gatekeeper by describing

gatekeeping as a mechanistic process governed more by the norms and routines of news

production than the purposive decision of individuals.

10

The Mr. Gates study became a model for many gatekeeping studies by putting the

individual gatekeeper at center stage and looking at how the process worked around him.

Some scholars (Bass, 1969; Brown, 1979), however, criticized White’s (1950) emphasis

on the individual because of what it left out of Lewin’s (1947) initial description of

gatekeeping. Bass (1969) examined the staff structure of United Nations Radio, where

stories came to a central news desk and then were sent to various language departments

for translation and broadcast. He said studying a wire editor as a gatekeeper was

analogous to studying one of the language editors at UN Radio, and he argued that the

news desk made coverage decisions, while wire editors and language editors processed

stories. Bass divided the news flow process into two parts: news gathering, which would

include reporters and their editors, and news processing, which would include other

editors, copyreaders, and translators. Bass said significant news decisions happened at the

news gathering level, a contention that differed from White’s, who saw any decision-

maker as a gatekeeper. This disagreement over terms formed the greater part of Bass’s

discussion of gatekeeping, but he also argued that White pared away a bit of Lewin’s

gatekeeping concept to make it applicable to mass communication instead of small-group

communication. Lewin (1947) initially said that gatekeeping “holds … for the traveling

of a news item through certain communication channels in a group” (p. 145), and Bass

(1969) pointed out that White’s omission of the phrase “in a group” changed a group

dynamics concept. Although Bass suggested that Lewin’s gatekeeping concept might

more accurately be applied to a family’s consumption of news rather than an

organization’s production of it, Bass did nothing to change White’s original application

of the term in his own analysis of gatekeeping.

11

Brown (1979), however, said White’s (1950) analysis of stories rejected by Mr.

Gates missed Lewin’s statement that gatekeeping applies to some, not all, information.

Brown said this ignored the forces Lewin described in his original conception, so Brown

examined the stories included about one topic in national news magazines over the course

of 30 years. He looked for correlations between Census data and the frequency of

coverage of family planning, and Brown found that gatekeeping decisions mirrored

societal perceptions. This finding would seem to indicate that gatekeepers are in tune

with public opinion.

However, Sasser and Russell (1972) concluded that “there is no such thing as

news of the day important to the public” or at the least, editors did not have the training

to recognize what the public judged to be important stories. Their study of several

newspapers and television stations found that media organizations consistently covered

major news events but in general shared few topics. Stempel (1985) also found that when

stories were divided into broad subject categories—such as politics and government,

crime, and general human interest—newspapers and television stations selected

approximately equal mixes of the types, although they varied widely in which stories

actually were selected. An analysis of White’s (1950) study suggested that the number of

stories the wire services released in each category of news influenced Mr. Gates to select

roughly the same mix (McCombs & Shaw, 1976). Dimmick (1974) also suggested that

gatekeepers were uncertain about what stories to choose.

These findings support Gieber’s (1964) contention that news is subjective to the

gatekeeper, and Adhikari, Everbach, and Fahmy (2002) also observed “little to suggest

that editors are detached and objective professionals” (Significance and discussion

12

section, ¶3). Whether subjectivity is a positive or negative thing, it is a theme of many

studies of individual gatekeepers dating back to White’s (1950) Mr. Gates, who rejected

several stories as “B.S.” and wrote on another, “Don’t care for suicides.”

Gatekeeping studies later expanded to look at the roles of groups, organizations,

and routines in gatekeeping decisions rather than the influence of the individual

gatekeeper only (Berkowitz, 1990; Berkowitz, 1991; Dimmick, 1974; Donohue, Olien, &

Tichenor, 1989; Shoemaker, 1991; Shoemaker, Eichholz, Kim, & Wrigley, 2001). None

suggested that the individuals were unimportant in the process, but rather that the

“structural context” within which individuals operate affects gatekeeping decisions

(Donohue, Olien, & Tichenor, 1989, p. 807). That can happen when an organization

reinforces a gatekeeper’s own values (Dimmick, 1974), issues such as deadlines and

space constraints impose (Donohue, Olien, & Tichenor, 1989; Shoemaker, 1991), or

media from different platforms must decide what to do with the same story (Abbott &

Brassfield, 1989; Epstein, 2000).

Routine and organizational influences frequently are discussed separately; both

are part of the hierarchy of influences on media content created by Shoemaker and Reese

(1996) that works its way outward from the individual level through media routines,

organization, extramedia, and ideological levels. Shoemaker (1991) differentiates

between routines and organizational factors by “including communication practices that

are common across many communication organizations” in the category of routines and

factors that vary in the organizational level (p. 53). A good story that comes across the

wire 10 minutes before a newspaper’s deadline is unlikely to get the same play it would

have earlier in the day; the immediate pressure to publish can constrain the level of detail

13

and context in a breaking story being posted to the Internet. Those time and space

constraints occur at many organizations, and Shoemaker and Reese (1996) said “routines

help explain how … content is shaped in response to those limits” (p. 118).

Organizational norms and policies also dictate the amount of time, space, and other

resources available for certain projects, but those vary among workplaces.

Journalists produce news within organizations and bureaucracies, and this

sociology of news has been of interest to a number of scholars (Hirsch, 1977; Reese &

Ballinger, 2001; Tuchman, 1978) who built on the work of Breed (1955). Breed talked

about policy as a “more or less consistent orientation shown by a paper” (p. 327) that

never was directly communicated to new employees but was widely known. Journalists

become socialized to their workplace and become subject to organizational level

influences on content. When Hirsch (1977) re-evaluated White’s (1950) gatekeeping

data, he argued that professional and organizational norms had far more effect on Mr.

Gates’ decisions than any personal bias the wire editor brought. Like McCombs and

Shaw (1976), Hirsch pointed out the similarity in the overall mix of stories chosen to the

mix of wire stories initially sent to Mr. Gates.

Broadening definitions. Although research of routines as gatekeepers appeared

more slowly than the work about individuals, it fit with Lewin’s contention from the

beginning that rules can act as impartial gatekeepers. Shoemaker et al. (2001) provide a

useful definition of gatekeepers that includes both people and processes: “Gatekeepers

are either the individuals or the sets of routine procedures that determine whether items

pass through the gates” (p. 235). The researchers performed a content analysis of the

coverage of 50 Congressional bills and then surveyed the newspaper reporters and editors

14

included in the sample of stories. Their study concludes that routines of news work shape

content more significantly than individual influence. Shoemaker (1991) suggested that

this could be all the more true at a large organization where many more people and

processes might be acting as gatekeepers than an organization like a community

newspaper. Gatekeeping at a larger organization would depend more on its rules than the

“idiosyncratic logic” of the individual (p. 56). This organizational level is important

because it puts the people and practices in place that “determine what gets past the gate

and how it is presented” (Shoemaker, 1991, p. 53).

The idea that gatekeeping plays a role in news presentation, not just selection, is

key in this study. Whereas White’s (1950) study and others focused on story selection,

Donohue, Tichenor, and Olien (1972) broadened information gatekeeping to include

“selection, shaping, display, timing, withholding, or repetition of entire messages or

message components” (p. 43). Shoemaker (1991) argued that items that made it through

the gate often had a strong positive force, which meant they were likely to be packaged

attractively, get good placement, and be repeated. Stories with negative forces that still

progressed through the gate were more likely to have “unfavorable shaping, display,

timing,” or repetition (p. 25). The problem with focusing on selection alone, Reese and

Ballinger (2001) said, was that the in-or-out decision ignored the effect of framing

messages. Time and space constrain the structure, or framing, of a story, and these

routine factors can act as gatekeeping forces.

Framing. The pieces of information included in a story, their position in the story,

pictures, infographics, or anything that contributes to content can have framing effects. A

“frame organizes everyday reality,” Tuchman (1978, p. 193) said, and it makes sense of

15

events that would otherwise have no context for many people. Reese (2001) defined it by

including the “interests, communicators, sources, and culture” that combine to create an

understanding of the world, which a person develops from all available “verbal and visual

symbolic resources” (p. 11). This suggests that every piece of information included in a

story compounds to create a different picture of an issue or event than if the newspaper

had included different pieces of information. Even if all of the same pieces are included

in two different presentations, the way they are structured affects the way a reader

processes the news (Reese, 2001).

Pavlik (2001) suggested that the Web, with its hypermedia and multimedia

capabilities, presents many framing possibilities that differ from traditional media.

Hypermedia, or the ability to link among online objects, provides “additional

background, detail and, most importantly, context” (p. 316), and layering multimedia

elements, such as audio and video files, can give extra content to many elements of a

given story. Pavlik did not discount the role of the journalist as gatekeeper of information

related to a story, but he said the role of the journalist online “emphasizes inclusiveness

of perspectives much more than in traditional journalism” (p. 319). “Perspectives” for

stories might include source documents, transcripts and recordings of sources’ views,

links to past stories on the issues, links directly to source information online, or other

such items that might have been merely a reference for the journalist’s synthesis for

traditional media.

Television gatekeeping. Scholars applied gatekeeping theory to print media for

years, then to radio (Bass, 1969), and finally to television news. Seeing how scholars

adapted the theory among media provides interesting context in a time when researchers

16

examine whether gatekeeping works on the Internet. The question of local focus was the

most important factor for both newspaper and television gatekeepers in a study by Abbott

and Brassfield (1989), but television gatekeepers were more likely to worry about

timeliness than newspaper editors and usually weighed visual storytelling criteria more

heavily. Berkowitz (1990) echoed this finding and said television gatekeeping was very

much a group process rather than an individual one. Harmon (1989) found that traditional

news values applied to local television news, but even though stations were capable of

enterprise reporting, their role more often was “that of a repackager of news” (p. 861).

The focus shifted to production and technological capability. The study did not address

the quality of the content, but Livingston and Bennett (2003) said they could make “no

guarantees that technologies will not be used simply as glitz factors” (p. 364).

Online gatekeeping. Researchers have questioned the viability of gatekeeping

theory in the new media era because of the vast amount of information available from so

many sources, and most studies have concluded that journalists’ role in information

gatekeeping is not dying but evolving (Blake, 2004; Cassidy, 2002; Singer, 2001; Singer,

2005). This concern about shifting roles seems to point more strongly at potential

changes in agenda setting and agenda building, however. Williams and Delli Carpini

(2004) heralded the “collapse of gatekeeping” (p. 1208), going against the tide who speak

of a gatekeeping evolution. The researchers argued that mainstream media—which they

viewed as a monolithic group rather than many individual gates—no longer have control

of story selection because they must follow as a pack stories that come to public

knowledge through alternative media, an issue that Wigley (2004) also discussed. Bill

Clinton became a case study for the researchers; Williams and Delli Carpini said that a

17

tabloid first reported the allegations by Gennifer Flowers, that a trade magazine first

wrote about Paula Jones, and that the Drudge Report broke the story about Monica

Lewinsky. These three situations persuaded Williams and Delli Carpini that “mainstream

journalism [had] lost its position as the central gatekeeper of the nation’s political

agenda” in a six-year period (p. 1225). From a broader view of gatekeeping, however, it

seems that as long as journalists are selecting some content and rejecting other items,

they have a gatekeeping role even in a media environment with more choices for the

audience.

The audience is of greater concern to Webmasters than to print gatekeepers,

though, Beard and Olsen (1999) found. They studied Webmasters of college and

university sites and found that the Webmasters’ previous work experience affected their

focus or main goal—such as editing, design, or communication—in managing the site.

These online gatekeepers also faced constraints consistent with those mentioned in earlier

gatekeeping research, such as inadequate resources, heavy workloads, degree of

autonomy, and sharing gatekeeping responsibilities. Beard and Olsen said these

constraints, particularly large amounts of work, created a gatekeeping role limited to

“selecting and processing existing messages” (p. 207) rather than creating news ones.

Overall, the researchers’ qualitative study of eight Webmasters concluded that these

people had many of the same responsibilities, values, and constraints as traditional

gatekeepers.

Several researchers have compared print and online editions to examine

gatekeeping effects (Blake, 2004; Singer, 2001). Singer’s sample of six Colorado

newspapers showed that “despite the unlimited news hold available online, editors of

18

Web products were whittling down the print package for online distribution” (p. 71); the

study found more than twice as many stories in the print editions than the papers posted

online. Stories online typically were identical or had minor changes to the print versions,

and although 48% of the print stories ran with some art, only about 18% of stories had art

online. The study revealed no daily news content made just for the site, but it showed that

a greater proportion of online stories were about the paper’s metropolitan area than the

amount in print editions. Of the news, sports, and business stories coded, about 45% of

online stories were metro items, and about 31% of print stories in the sample were metro

items. Singer concluded that the Web, with its global potential, was becoming a local

niche for online newspapers. A number of constraints that could be considered routine or

organizational factors in the Shoemaker and Reese (1996) scheme were listed. Most of

the papers in the sample had few online staff members, and locally written stories

represented content that the organization already had paid for by employing its reporters

and editors. The newspapers would have had to pay more money to find or create

additional content. Singer observed that journalists had a “seeming willingness to

abandon their traditional gatekeeping responsibilities,” (p. 78), which she said might be

because they faced organizational constraints, reordered priorities, or recognized the high

level of personalization the Web offers its users.

The contention that the “Internet blows open the whole notion of a ‘gate’”

remains in Singer’s (2005, p. 3) work, but she argued that journalists give credibility to

information online and therefore retain a gatekeeping role online. The study targeted

editors of online political content at some of the country’s largest newspapers during the

2004 presidential campaign, and 47 responded. Most content originated in the print

19

medium, but Singer found journalists increasingly likely to enhance the original content.

Three ways that journalists stepped back from traditional gatekeeping roles included the

ability for users to personalize content, the presence of chats, message boards, or

discussion forums, and the addition of blogs—online journals. The first two methods

gave a great deal of freedom to users, and the last allowed journalists or local opinion

leaders to analyze politics. These results indicate that journalists may see their

gatekeeping role as a responsibility to offer tools for analysis and interact with readers.

Singer said this interaction could save professional journalists from online irrelevancy.

The interaction and vetting of information provides an even more valuable gatekeeping

role in “today’s rowdy, unbounded information environment” (p. 24).

Blake (2004) said gatekeeping was a valid construct for evaluating different

media with common content ownership. Rather than saying journalists abandoned

gatekeeping roles online, Blake suggested that at least one gate existed to select news to

appear online because his study of two papers found one that focused its content on

global and national issues and one that, like Singer (2001) found, focused its content on

local and state issues. In both cases, however, stories appearing online were more likely

to have been written by a staff member than some other source. Blake searched online for

all stories appearing in the front and local sections of the newspapers and found about

78% on the Web—a higher percentage but an even smaller sample than Singer’s—but

almost all of the stories that had photographs in the print edition lacked them online.

For the most part, researchers agree that online gatekeeping is important but

evolving. Many have concluded that quantity is not quality, as Arant and Anderson

(2000) said: “If a news organization simply publishes everything it can get its hands on in

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its bottomless online news hole, is it covering an issue in a way that best serves its

audience?” (¶5). Organizational constrains might make that much content impossible to

manage, but research has shown a variety of trends in online newspapers.

Trends in online newspapers

Several studies have suggested that online newspapers are complementary to print

editions, not competitive. People who go online to seek out information about politics,

sports, business, science, international affairs, local news, and entertainment news are

likely to continue to read about those niche interests in traditional media (Dutta-Bergman,

2004). Dutta-Bergman used survey data from more than 3,000 individuals and concluded

that new media news is complementary to traditional media and that “content … is the

critical ingredient in media choice” (p. 58). Chyi and Lasorsa (2002) and Zaharopoulos

(2003) also found that readers used both print and online editions of the same newspaper,

making them complementary.

However, the State of the News Media 2005 survey by the Project for Excellence

in Journalism indicated that online news is beginning to cannibalize traditional media

forms and that online news is likely to draw even more users away from newspapers in

the future because Web users are far younger than newspaper readers. The same study

shows that the percentage of regular users of online news was up to 29% in 2004 from

23% in 2000. This growth would be enhanced more dramatically if newspapers would

add more original content to the Web product, said Peng et al. (1999), adding that the

result would be cost-effective operations. In many cases, though, newspapers have posted

nothing more than what appears in their print editions to their Web sites (Gubman &

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Greer, 1997; Martin, 1998; Neuberger, Tonnemacher, Biebl, & Duck, 1998; Peng et al.,

1999; Tankard & Ban, 1998; Weiss, 2004).

Shovelware. The derisive term “shovelware” describes print content shoveled up

to dump online wholesale, without alteration. Studies have found that many newspapers

post about one-quarter to just over half of the content they produce for their print editions

(Arant & Anderson, 2000; Neuberger et al., 1998; Saksena & Hollifield, 2002).

Neuberger et al. said a strong orientation toward print content could be both a good and

bad thing: if readers base their expectations of the online product on the print edition they

are used to, then shovelware and similar organization can benefit a site. However, too

much faithfulness to the print original means that unique Web opportunities go untapped.

Content may receive a variety of treatments online, but Weiss (2004) found that

65% of stories added to newspapers’ home pages had no contextual features added. Her

content analysis of 20 newspaper Web sites looked at stories to see whether contextual

features such as photos, related stories, section additions, hyperlinks, polls, forums, blogs,

slideshows, video, audio, or maps had been uploaded to the site as well.

Many stories are placed online with few modifications from the print version

(Martin, 1998). A case study of two newspapers showed that online staff members

sometimes wrote new headlines to fit their space requirements and often had to modify

photographs from the print versions in order to fit the online templates, similar to

Singer’s (2001) findings. Martin said online staff members identified their primary job

function as selecting and reformatting existing content, not creating new content or

enhancing it.

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Online staff members of other sites have said their sites have original content, but

it is not in daily news sections (Neuberger et al., 1998; Tankard & Ban, 1998). About

three-quarters of 135 online newspapers reported posting content not in the print edition,

but the content usually included evergreen features and community services, such as

dining guides, tourism information, regional information, and some special project

stories. In general, research shows that many newspaper Web sites are posting stories

without significant editing or additions to their Web sites, and many have questioned

whether that hurts the newspaper in the long run by creating a competitor and whether it

ignores some of the Internet’s technical possibilities. Not all online editors thought any

kind of changes had to occur: “Good print copy makes for good online copy,” one said in

a survey by Arant and Anderson (2000). This kind of edition-blind evaluation to justify

shovelware overlooks some of the documented differences about the way users process

information on a monitor versus on paper (Poynter Institute, 2004).

Interactivity and multimedia use. Interactivity has been called the Internet’s

outstanding characteristic (Morris, 2001), but researchers have found mixed results about

its use on newspaper Web sites. Lowrey (2003) performed a census of Mississippi

newspapers online and created a “degree of site interactivity” variable by totaling

occurrences of interactive features on the 48 sites. Lowrey found a mean 3.67

occurrences of e-mail links from stories, list of staff e-mails, e-mail links to Webmasters,

other contact information, reader comments posted from stories, chat rooms, bulletin

boards, ability to e-mail stories to others, polls, search functions, and hyperlinks to

supplemental information. The data suggested that larger newspapers’ sites are more

23

likely to be interactive, a finding echoed about many features unique to the Web (Greer &

Mensing, 2004; Tankard & Ban, 1998; Weiss, 2004; Zaharopoulos, 2003).

Some scholars also consider multimedia applications to have interactive

properties, and its use also has been examined on newspaper sites. A multimedia

presentation may use audio, video, graphics, or other methods to give users a more

complete picture of a story. From a different perspective, Sundar (2000) called

“multimedia” a misleading term because it doesn’t refer to multiple media but multiple

senses involved in processing a message or multiple channels used to transmit it. The

multiple channels might include animation, audio, video (Gubman & Greer, 1997), or

pictures (Sundar, 2000). Multimedia gives readers the sense that they can control how

they experience a story, and it might also cause them to rate a site as more professional

(Sundar, 2000). The sensory experience provided by the Internet is similar to the

television, which provides visual and auditory stimulation (Welch, 2004). The findings of

Sundar’s experiment, though, suggest that multimedia applications actually hinder

memory for story content.

Gubman and Greer (1997) defined multimedia as animation, audio, and video,

and their content analysis found only 12 sites using any of those in news sections of 83

online newspapers, and Massey (2000) found it even more rare. He dropped analysis of

multimedia in analysis of Asian news sites because he found no occurrence of any

applications. Kamerer and Bressers (1998) found few uses of audio and video and

suggested that the technological limitations of Web access still made these features

impractical because of long loading times and inconsistent buffering.

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Advances in time and technology may have shifted the picture about multimedia

use. Dibean and Garrison (2001) found 30 percent of site pages for six newspapers

offering video in 1999 and 27 percent offering audio. The sample distribution—two small

circulation, two mid-sized, and two large circulation newspapers—probably skewed these

findings, though, since Schultz (1999) found that larger newspapers were more likely to

offer multimedia applications. Greer and Mensing (2004) performed a longitudinal

analysis of more than 80 online newspapers, beginning with the data collected in the

Gubman and Greer (1997) study. Only a handful were using audio and video content in

1997, but nearly half were doing so by 2003. A great deal of this increase was in the

amount of multimedia—audio, video, or animation—used in news stories; in the early

years of the study, most multimedia use was in advertisements.

Schultz (1999) described multimedia and interactivity as separate spheres, but the

presence of one on a news site often means the site is likely to use the other to tell stories.

Schultz found 16% of newspaper sites using multimedia applications, as well as a

correlation between that group and the use of interactive functions, which he

operationalized as the presence of discussion forums. Of sites that used multimedia

applications, 69% had forums, and only 26% who lacked multimedia on their sites hosted

forums. Schultz also created an index of interactive options by counting general e-mail

addresses, e-mail links from particular stories, e-mail links to politicians and officials,

discussion forums, chat rooms, polls, and online letters to the editor. Online newspapers

with multimedia had a mean score of 5.88 on the index, whereas others had an average of

3.74. The difference was statistically significant.

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Another study counted streaming video, streaming audio, photos, animated

graphics, static graphics, slideshows, and photo galleries as multimedia components, and

Welch (2004) found news Web sites using all of them except animated graphics. Photos

were by far the most frequently used multimedia component. Welch also found sites

using interactive elements including polls and surveys, discussion forums, quizzes, search

tools, e-mail capability, related Web links, feedback forms, and several other tools. The

ability to e-mail articles to others and the provision of related Web links were the most

frequently used interactive tools.

Local news online

Newspapers divide their pages into sections to comply with press constraints, and

these divisions often fall by types of content; the front section contains national and

international news, another section contains local news, and still others might include

sports, business, and features. All sections are likely to include a mix of staff-written and

wire stories. The paper’s Web site might contain these types of stories in a structure and

organization that mimics the newspaper, but several studies indicate that local news is

handled differently on the Web than it is in print editions.

Local news is one of the most common types of information on newspaper sites,

Greer and Mensing (2004) found; 95% of 81 online newspapers sampled included it in

2003, up slightly from about 90% when the longitudinal study was first begun in 1997.

Zaharopoulos (2003) found most of the stories posted on newspaper sites’ home pages to

be local news stories, and several editors reported that they publish all or most of their

paper’s locally written stories online (Arant & Anderson, 2000). Martin’s (1998) case

study found that the Raleigh News & Observer could post only stories written by its

26

reporters about local or state news. This preference for local stories also emerged in other

studies, such as one by Chyi and Sylvie (2001). Their survey revealed that more users of

online newspapers are local rather than long-distance and that the local audience was

precisely the one newspapers aimed for.

Blake (2004) examined gatekeeping between print and online editions of

newspapers and concluded that “the ‘gate’ from the print to the online format is primarily

a geographic filter that allows much local and state content to appear while serving as a

barrier to less-local news being redistributed online” (Discussion section, ¶6). More state

and metropolitan stories were available online than initially expected at the larger

newspaper, and this paper also showed a strong preference for staff-written content over

stories from other sources. Blake found the smaller paper had more global and national

stories than expected, and although it selected more non-staff articles for its Web site

than locally written articles, the site relied on non-staff content less heavily than the print

edition. The study showed that newspaper sites consistently chose content based on

geography— whether locally or non-locally oriented.

Singer (2001) found a significant difference between the percentage of metro

stories in online editions and print editions. In the sample of six Colorado papers

representing a variety of circulation sizes, about 45% of all stories online were metro

stories, and just 31% percent of all print items were metro stories. The differences were

particularly sharp between the two mid-sized papers represented; the Colorado Springs

Gazette had about 34% metro stories in print and about 55% online, and the Pueblo

Chieftain had about 28% metro stories in print and nearly 68% online. Singer pointed out

that nearly 79% of stories that appeared in print only were from outside each paper’s

27

circulation area. The affiliation of reporters for the stories in both print and online

editions shows a split even more dramatic than the local percentages: staff writers wrote

or contributed to 59% of stories on the Web sites, and they wrote just under 36% of the

stories in the print sample.

The inclusion of photography and other artwork was another part of the Colorado

study because Singer (2001) said “a photograph or infographic tells a story in its own

right and is worth inclusion in any discussion of the relative emphasis given to particular

types of newspaper content” (p. 76). Broadening the discussion about content to the

components that make up a message allows consideration of gatekeeping from more than

the selection point of view. Singer found a significant difference between the art used in

print and online. The term “art” had broad application in Singer’s study; this category

included not only photographs, but infographics and logos, as well. Out of more than

3,400 stories in the print sample, 48% had some form of art, whether it was a simple

identifying graphic or multi-photo package. The online sample had nearly 1,400 stories,

and just 18% of those had an art element either in the story, on the home page menu, or

as standalone art.

If location is indeed a gate for stories between print and online editions, it seems

worthwhile to examine whether it applies for more than story selection. Donohue,

Tichenor, and Olien (1972) included shaping, display, withholding, or repetition of

message components in their definition of information gatekeeping, and these elements

can be compared between local and non-local stories in print and online editions. The

contextual elements that support and run alongside the text of a story in print and online

formats are the focus of this study. Several studies (Blake, 2004; Singer, 2001) have

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compared print and online newspapers, but they focused on story selection. This study

focuses not on selection, but on content presentation.

RQ1: Does story content differ between print and Web versions of daily stories?

RQ2: Do contextual elements differ between print and Web versions of daily

stories?

RQ3: Is there a difference in the amount of contextual elements published with

stories by staff reporters and stories from other sources?

RQ4: Is there a difference in the amount of contextual elements published with

stories focused on local issues compared with stories about state, national, or

international issues?

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Chapter 3: Method

This study compared print and Web versions of stories through a content analysis

of stories appearing on the front pages and metro section front pages of five newspapers.

The first two research question—Do content and contextual elements differ between print

and Web versions of daily stories?—required the comparison of stories that appeared in

both editions. The researcher chose to analyze stories on section front pages to combat

previous findings that newspapers post to the Web only some of their stories published in

print (Peng et al., 1999; Regan, 1995; Singer, 2001). Using both the front page, which

carries international and national news as well as important local stories, and the metro

section front page, which focuses on local news by definition, allowed examination of the

final two research questions: Is there a difference in the amount of contextual elements

published with staff-written stories and stories about the metropolitan area compared with

stories by other sources and about other geographic areas? Studying both the print and

online editions not only allowed comparison of content standards between the two types

of media but also whether each medium alone treated local stories differently than

national and international ones.

The papers selected for this study have the highest circulation numbers—all

greater than 425,000 on Sundays—of papers in the southern United States. These papers

are the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

the St. Petersburg Times, and the Miami Herald. All have circulation numbers placing

them in the top 25 largest newspapers in the nation, according the Audit Bureau of

30

Circulations (2005a), except for the Dallas Morning News, which is under censure by the

agency (Audit Bureau of Circulations, 2005c).

The bureau censured the Dallas paper in July 2004 for misreporting its circulation

figures (Audit Bureau of Circulations, 2005c), and as a consequence, the Morning News

was excluded from such lists while it underwent audits every six months for two years

(Audit Bureau of Circulations, 2004, 2005b). However, the bureau’s most recent audit

placed the Sunday circulation of the Dallas Morning News at 655,809, a figure second in

the list of southern publications only to the circulation of the Houston Chronicle (Audit

Bureau of Circulations, 2005a, 2005c).

The Houston Chronicle is a Hearst-owned newspaper in Texas with Sunday

circulation of 720,711, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (2005a). It has a

partnership agreement with KHOU that allows the Chronicle to use the television

station’s video on its Web site (American Press Institute, 2005), and its Web address is

www.chron.com. Like the Chronicle, each newspaper site was unique to the publication

and not shared with any partners in a portal format.

Belo owns the Dallas Morning News in Texas, and the paper has a partnership

with a television station, Web site, cable television network, Spanish-language

newspaper, and a youth-oriented newspaper (American Press Institute, 2005). Its Web

address is www.dallasnews.com.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in Georgia has a Sunday circulation of 610,338

and is owned by Cox Newspapers. The newspaper does not have any convergence

partnerships, and its Web address is www.ajc.com.

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The St. Petersburg Times in Florida has a Sunday circulation of 432,231 and is

owned by the Times Publishing Co. The paper has a cross-promotional relationship with

television station WTSP (American Press Institute, 2005), and its Web address is

www.sptimes.com.

Knight-Ridder owns the Miami Herald in Florida; the paper has a Sunday

circulation of 429,697. The Herald’s partnership with a television station, radio station,

and cable television station provide the newspaper with additional video and audio

components for its Web site (American Press Institute, 2005). The paper’s Web address

is www.miami.com.

Several studies (Schultz, 1999; Greer & Mensing, 2004) have found that larger

newspapers have more sophisticated Web sites that include more photos and multimedia

elements than papers with smaller circulations. Looking only at large newspapers in this

study limits potential differences between sites of papers that have varying resources

based on their circulation sizes. The papers are all major metropolitan dailies from one

quadrant of the country.

Constructed week sampling was used for the content analysis because this method

has produced more reliable results than random sampling and consecutive days (Jones &

Carter, 1959; Riffe, Aust, & Lacy, 1993; Stempel, 1952). This type of sampling creates a

composite week over a period of time so that each day of the week is represented, but the

selection of that day is random. This method prevents oversampling of days with

unusually large newspapers, such as Sundays, which can happen with random sampling.

Constructed weeks are superior to consecutive weeks because the results are easier to

generalize over time (Riffe et al., 1993; Wimmer & Dominick, 2003). For this study, the

32

researcher created two composite weeks from the days between September 18, 2005, and

October 15, 2005, a period devoid of major holidays or other planned and nationally

significant events. The researcher took the four Sundays that occurred in the month and

randomly selected two of them. The process was repeated for the other six days of the

week, for a total of 14 days that included each day of the week twice. Both Stempel

(1952) and Riffe et al. (1993) said precision increases only slightly with sample size in

newspaper content analysis, and the faint margin of improvement is often not enough to

outweigh the extra resources required to double or triple a sample.

Content analysis online has special challenges because of the fleeting nature of

content on the Web and because the structure of Web pages can defy analysis strategies

used with traditional media (McMillan, 2000). McMillan concluded that content analysis

is perfectly valid to apply “to the moving target of the Web” (p. 93). Weiss (2004)

suggested that researchers continue to explore the use and standards of online content

analysis. Singer (2001) warned that the Web “can be a bear” for researchers using content

analysis, a “method whose reliability and thus credibility rest primarily on the fact that

the content is stable and the classification is reproducible” (p. 70). This cautionary note is

particularly true for online newspapers; their news content is updated at least daily, if not

more often. Even if researchers take screen snapshots of Web pages, they often have a

few hours—or, at best, a few days—to examine the content in the context of the site

before it disappears forever. These factors make careful coding of online content a

priority because it often cannot be replicated.

Individual stories were the unit of analysis in this study. The content analysis was

carried out based on the stories on the print editions’ front pages and metro section front

33

pages of the five newspapers in the sample. The bias toward print content was necessary

in this study from a gatekeeping point of view. Blake (2004) made a similar decision

because online-only content never passed through a print gate before its publication to the

Web. This study looked for differences between print and online versions of stories,

which meant that stories had to be in both editions; the researcher used the print editions

to form a directory of stories to find online “because the print paper almost always serves

as the content provider for the online edition” (Chyi & Lasorsa, 2002). Newspapers have

judged stories on the front page and front of the metro section to be the most relevant,

newsworthy items for their readers that day. Stories inside the two sections and in other

sections of the print edition were excluded in both the print and online analyses.

For each newspaper each day, the researcher examined stories on the front and

metro front pages and the corresponding stories in real time online (see Appendix A).

The final step was to compare the two versions. Print stories were coded for newspaper;

reporter’s affiliation, which could include staff, wire or news service, contributor,

unknown, or some combination of those that might be noted in a story’s byline or footer;

geographic emphasis—international, national, state, or metro; and elements

accompanying the story. The elements could include photos, sidebars, infoboxes,

infographics, artwork, refers to additional content in print or online, pull quotes, and pull

outs of portions of the story (see Appendix B).

The researcher began online data collection each day at 11 a.m. beginning with

the Houston Chronicle and moving to the smallest paper, usually completed by 2 p.m.

Collecting the stories online at the same time each day avoided potential problems with

any updating deadlines each site met each day. The researcher visually scanned home

34

pages for each newspaper and the top pages of major news sections to look for the day’s

stories online. If the visual search turned up nothing, the researcher used the online search

function to look for the headline. If both search methods failed, the story was classified as

print only. Once the story was found online, the researcher coded whether it was the same

version of the story that had run in print, whether it had the same headline, and what

elements accompanied the story. Like the print edition, this could include photos and

infoboxes, but it also might include features unique to the Web: video, audio, source

documents, polls, quizzes, animated graphics, static graphics, slideshows, photo galleries,

related story links, related Web links, and live chats (Welch, 2004; Weiss, 2004).

Discussion forums and blogs were counted only if they focused on the story in question

and did not serve as an interactive tool for the whole section or site (see Appendix C).

After looking at the print and online versions of the stories separately, the

researcher put them side-by-side to compare leads and contextual elements. The

researcher noted whether the first paragraph of each story was the same or different in its

two versions and compared whether any contextual elements were repeated in both

editions. Elements that could overlap editions included photos, sidebars, infographics,

infoboxes, artwork, refers, pull quotes, and pull outs.

The researcher coded all 14 days of content for analysis. However, two additional

coders examined two days worth of data, or about 14% of the total sample, in order to

determine the reliability of the data. The additional coders analyzed the print editions of

the newspapers and screen shots of the online versions of stories collected by the

researcher because the stories’ pages were no longer current when the additional coders

evaluated the material.

35

The statistical program SPSS, version 13.0, was used for data analysis. Most of

the data in this study was collected at the nominal level, so a great deal of the analysis

consisted of frequency calculations and chi-square measures of significance. However,

some questions about data collected at the ratio level were best answered by parametric

statistics, including t-tests and ANOVA.

To establish a measure of reliability for the content analysis, two additional

coders evaluated a portion of the data. The researcher coded all 14 days of newspapers,

and the additional coders both evaluated the first two days of the sample. The additional

coders used regular print editions of each newspaper coded, but they had to use screen

shots of each story online rather than seeing it on a live Web site. They were able to see

what each story looked like on the day it was posted, but they could not follow links or

make any Web features active.

The first two days of the sample included 88 stories, of which all coders entered

data on 83 stories, or 13% of the entire sample of 635 stories. Intercoder reliability was

measured on the print element variable because of the large amount of data included in it.

Holsti’s formula produced a reliability coefficient of .85 with Coder 1 and .90 with Coder

2. Holsti’s formula is two times the number of cases on which coders agree divided by

total number of coding decisions. Although the formula has been criticized for failing to

account for the role of chance in coder agreement (Wimmer & Dominick, 2003),

Neuendorf (2002) said a Holsti’s reliability coefficient of .90 or greater is almost always

acceptable, and that a coefficient of .80 or greater is acceptable in most situations.

36

Chapter 4: Results

The 14-day sample yielded 635 stories on the front and metro section front pages

of the five newspapers, and versions of 612 of the stories, or 96.4% of the total sample,

also appeared on the newspapers’ Web sites. The number of print stories was distributed

evenly across the newspapers, as shown in Table 1, and nearly equal numbers of stories

appeared on the front pages of both sections: 49.1% (n=312) on the front page and 50.9%

(n=323) on the metro section front page.

Table 1. Distribution of stories by newspaper

Newspaper Frequency PercentHouston Chronicle 121 19.1%Dallas Morning News 133 20.9%Atlanta Journal-Constitution 124 19.5%St. Petersburg Times 125 19.7%Miami Herald 132 20.8%Total 635 100%

RQ1. The first research question asked whether story content differed between

print and online versions of stories. The operational measure for this question was a

comparison of a story’s lead between its print and online versions. Of the 612 stories that

appeared both in print and online, 96.1% had the same lead word-for-word in both media,

a significant finding, according to a chi-square goodness-of-fit test, X2(1, N=612)=

519.77, p < .001. Chi-square goodness-of-fit test compares observed frequencies to

expected frequencies, determining whether distribution among categories is significant,

or likely to have occurred by chance (Wimmer & Dominick, 2003).

37

The remaining stories had differences in the first paragraph that could have

included rewriting, updating, or using a different version of a story. A small percentage

of stories differed in content between media. Although the text of stories was

substantially the same in all but a few cases, a larger percentage ran under different

headlines in print and online. Stories online had different headlines than their print

versions 24% (n=147) of the time. A chi-square goodness-of-fit test also indicated this

finding to be significant, X2(1, N=612) = 165.24, p < .001.

RQ2. The second research question asked whether contextual elements differed

between the two media. Of the 612 stories that appeared both in print and online, 335

stories had contextual elements in both media. In 203 of those cases, or 32% of the entire

sample, the stories shared at least one element between media, whether it was a picture,

infobox, infographic, or other contextual element. The remaining 132 stories (20.8%) had

unique elements in each medium, whether it was a different photo or other traditional

element or the use of online-only elements that newspapers could not reproduce in print.

A chi-square goodness-of-fit test indicated that the results were significant, X2(2, N=612)

= 51.54, p < .001.

Table 2. Comparison of contextual elements between print and online stories

Element comparison Frequency Percentage* At least one version lacking contextual elements 277 43.6% At least one contextual element in common 203 32.0% All contextual elements different 132 20.8% Story not online 23 3.6% Total 635 100.0%

* X2(2, N=612) = 51.54, p < .001

38

Of the 32% of stories that had elements in common between versions, five of

eight types of elements were repeated between versions. Table 3 breaks down the number

of contextual elements that stories had in common between print and online editions.

Because some stories had more than one element in common, percentages do not add up

to 100% across elements.

Table 3. Elements in common between print and online stories

Element Number per story Frequency Percentage X2 value

0 516 81.3%1 84 13.2%2 8 1.3%3 1 0.2%4 1 0.2%5 2 0.3%

Story not online 23 3.6%

Photo

Total 635 100.0%

2068.22* df=5

0 510 80.3%1 90 14.2%2 12 1.9%

Story not online 23 3.6%

Infobox

Total 635 100%

703.41* df=2

0 597 94.0%1 15 2.4%

Story not online 23 3.6%

Infographic

Total 635 100.0%

553.47* df=2

0 604 95.1%1 8 1.3%

Story not online 23 3.6%

Refer

Total 635 100.0%

580.42* df=1

0 609 95.9%1 3 0.5%

Story not online 23 3.6%

Sidebar

Total 635 100.0%

600.06* df=1

* p < .001

39

Three of eight print elements never were in common with online elements:

artwork, pull quotes, and pull outs. These elements also were not among the most

frequently used in print editions; photos and infoboxes were the most common contextual

elements with print stories. More than 85% (n=545) of stories in the sample had at least

one contextual element in print, which is a significant finding, according to a chi-square

goodness-of-fit test, X2(1, N=635) = 326.02, p > .001.

Table 4 shows the eight categories of contextual elements for print and shows

how often one or more examples of each kind of element appeared in print stories.

Table 4. Number of stories with types of print elements present (n=635)

Element Frequency Percentage*Photo 433 68.2%Infobox 164 25.8%Refer 120 18.9%Infographic 93 14.6%Sidebar 53 8.3%Pull quote 53 8.3%Pull out 7 1.1%

Note. Some stories had multiple types of elements, so table does not total 100%. * p > .001

Fewer stories online had contextual elements; 58% (n=355) of the 612 stories

online had one or more contextual elements. Table 4 shows the 17 categories of

contextual elements for online stories and shows how often one or more examples of a

particular kind of element appeared with a story.

40

Table 5. Number of stories with types of online elements present (n=612)

Element Frequency Percentage*Photo 142 23.2%Related Web links 120 19.6%Infobox 119 19.4%Related story links 102 16.7%Video 76 12.4%Photo gallery 73 11.9%Static graphic 69 11.2%Interactive graphic 44 7.2%Document 34 5.6%Poll 35 5.6%Audio 23 3.8%Blog 22 3.4%Discussion forum 17 2.8%Other 15 2.5%Live chat 8 1.3%Quiz 2 0.3%Slideshow 2 0.3%

Note. Some stories had multiple kinds of elements, so table does not total 100%. * p > .001

The number of contextual elements with each story in print was related to the

story’s section. An independent groups t-test, which compares the means of two unrelated

groups (Weaver, 1989), revealed that a greater number of contextual elements appeared

with front-page stories (M=2.82, SD=2.23) than with metro section stories (M=1.60,

SD=1.39), t (df)=633, p < .001. The same trend held true for elements that ran in both

print and online versions of a story. A greater number of common contextual elements

ran in print and online with stories that ran on the print front page (M=0.48, SD=0.73)

than with stories that ran on the print metro section (M=0.36, SD=0.68), t (df)=610, p =

.034. Front-page placement made it more likely for a story to have a greater number of

contextual elements.

41

More print stories have contextual elements than the same stories online. Slightly

more than half (58%) of the stories had elements in both media, and about a third of the

stories repeated the same elements in both print and online versions. Although the

response to RQ2 does not provide overwhelming support, the results showed that a fair

portion of stories offered unique features in both media.

RQ3. The third research question asked whether the amount of contextual

elements published with stories by staff writers differed from stories by other sources.

Overall, data analysis did not reveal any significant relationships between reporter

affiliation and the amount of contextual elements published with the reporter’s story.

Stories written by staff members alone far outnumbered stories from any other source, as

Tables 6 and 7 show. When stories where staff writers collaborated with other sources

are also considered, more than 90% of stories on the front and metro section front pages

carried the reporting of a staff writer, but the distinctions were necessary because in a

number of cases, a staff contribution to a story seemed to amount to a few sentences or

paragraphs inserted to localize a story from another source.

One-way analysis of variance compares three or more means at a time involving

one independent variable (Weaver, 1989), and the researcher used this test to evaluate the

mean frequency of contextual elements by seven categories of reporter affiliation in print

stories, which are shown in Table 5. ANOVA showed no significant relationship between

print reporter affiliation and frequency of print elements, F(6, 628) = 1.54, p = 0.162.

42

Table 6. Print reporter affiliation and mean print elements

Reporter affiliation

Print story

frequency Print story

percentage*

Mean elements per story

Staff 545 85.8% 2.16 Wire 49 7.7% 2.06 Staff & wire 33 5.2% 2.88 Contributor 3 0.5% 3.00 Unknown 1 0.2% 6.00 Staff & contributor 3 0.5% 2.33 Staff & unknown 1 0.2% 1.00 Total 635 100.0% 2.20

* X2(6, N=635) = 2677.98, p < .001 ANOVA also showed no significant relationship between online reporter

affiliation and frequency of online photos, F(6, 605) = 1.04, p = 0.396, or frequency of

online infoboxes, F(6, 605) = 0.69, p = 0.657, shown in Table 6.

Table 7. Online reporter affiliation and mean frequency of photos and infoboxes

Reporter affiliation

Online story

frequency Online story percentage*

Mean photos

per story

Mean infoboxes per story

Staff 526 85.9% 0.29 0.24 Wire 46 7.5% 0.24 0.15 Staff & wire 31 5.1% 0.10 0.16 Contributor 4 0.7% 0.75 0.50 Unknown 1 0.2% 0.00 0.00 Staff & contributor 3 0.5% 0.33 0.00 Staff & unknown 1 0.2% 0.00 0.00 Total 612 100.0% 0.28 0.23

* X2(6, N=612) = 2588.10, p < .001

The data also allowed analysis of the types of contextual elements with each

story; no print story had more than six of eight types of elements, and no online story had

more than nine of 17 types of elements. The mean number of types of elements per story

43

(see Table 8) also had no significant relationship with print reporter affiliation, F(6, 628)

= 0.970, p = 0.444, or online reporter affiliation, F(6, 605) = 0.576, p = 0.750.

Table 8. Online reporter affiliation and mean types of elements represented

Reporter affiliation Print story frequency

Mean types of print

elements

Online story

frequency

Mean types of online elements

Staff 545 1.45 526 1.54Wire 49 1.51 46 1.15Staff & wire 33 1.79 31 1.10Contributor 3 1.67 4 1.00Unknown 1 1.00 1 1.00Staff & contributor 3 2.33 3 1.00Staff & unknown 1 1.00 1 0.00Total 635 1.48 612 1.48

RQ4. The fourth research question asked whether the amount of contextual

elements published with stories about metro-area news differed from stories about other

geographic areas. Stories about each newspaper’s metro area had the lowest mean

number of contextual elements in print, as Table 9 shows, and ANOVA revealed a

significant difference in the means, F(3, 631) = 2.86, p = .036.

44

Table 9. Story geographic emphasis and mean frequency of print elements

Geographic focal area

Print story frequency

Percentage* of print stories

Mean elements per story

International 47 7.4% 2.66National 115 18.1% 2.54State 126 19.8% 2.15Metro 347 54.6% 2.04Total 635 100.0% 2.20

* X2(3, N=635) = 320.71, p < .001 Although newspapers published more stories about the metro area than all other

geographic emphases combined, those stories had fewer contextual elements with them

than any of the other categories. Stories about other geographic areas also tended to

incorporate a slightly more diverse mix of contextual elements, as displayed in Table 9.

ANOVA showed that metro stories in print have a mean of 1.38 types of contextual

elements out of eight, below a total mean of 1.48, F(3, 631) = 5.812, p = .001. As with

the mean in print features, the mean of types of online features that ran with metro stories

fell in third place among the four geographic areas. The ANOVA was significant, F(3,

608) = 3.666, p = .012.

Table 10. Story geographic emphasis and mean types of elements represented

Geographic focal area

Print story frequency

Mean types of print

elements

Online story

frequency

Mean types of online elements

International 47 1.85 44 1.18 National 115 1.73 106 1.66 State 126 1.37 125 1.94 Metro 347 1.38 337 1.28 Total 635 1.48 612 1.48

45

Data indicated that stories with a geographic emphasis on the metro area have

fewer contextual elements than stories with other geographic emphases in print. Although

the mean number of photos with online stories about the metro area is slightly higher

(0.29) than the mean number of photos online for all geographic emphases (0.28), the

difference is not significant, ANOVA revealed, F(3, 608) = 1.555, p = .199. The mean

number of infoboxes with online stories about the metro area (0.20) was lower than the

mean for any other geographic emphasis and therefore below the overall mean (0.23).

However, ANOVA showed that differences in the mean number of infoboxes in each

geographical category was not significant, F(3, 608) = 1.191, p = .312. International

stories have a higher mean number of contextual elements in print and online than stories

with other geographic emphases, but the differences were not significant.

46

Chapter 5: Conclusion

This study set out to examine the ways newspapers and their Web sites distribute

and display news, and the results showed different standards for print content and

contextual elements. First of all, nearly all of the stories that appeared on the two section

front pages examined also appeared online. Previous studies (Blake, 2004; Singer, 2001)

that have examined all news stories in a newspaper and on its Web site reported half to

three-quarters of stories in print also appearing on the newspaper’s Web site. This study

has no basis for reporting such a percentage for all stories in an issue, but it did reveal

that more than 96% of stories on the front page and metro section front page also appear

on the Web.

This comparison with past findings would seem to indicate that placement on one

of these section front pages in print could create a positive force for a story, making it

easier for it to move past online gatekeepers and gatekeeping routines. Competition for

front-page story slots is among the fiercest fights for space at any given newspaper, and

when a story makes it through the gate, it means it is more likely to receive attractive

packaging, good placement, or repetition (Shoemaker, 1991). The finding about the

consistent inclusion of stories from the two news sections opens the door for future study

about story placement and its selection across media.

Moving beyond story selection, the data suggested that story text may not face

additional gatekeeping processes between publication and posting of editions; only 4% of

stories in the sample had different leads between media. In traditional inverted-pyramid

47

style news writing, the lead is the place in the story that contains the most important

information, which is often the most forward-looking. Therefore, it is a likely place to

look for the most updated information in a story. Only a handful of stories offered

different content across media as measured by the lead. Once newspapers publish stories,

that is the way the stories stay in most cases, regardless of the limitless opportunities for

updated information online.

However, this finding also may not mean that newspaper Web sites offer only old

news. Some stories that were posted online the same way they ran in print had updated

versions elsewhere on the site. For instance, several newspapers in the sample posted

online the print version of a story about a tour boat capsizing in New York, almost as if

the Web site were running the print version for the sake of record. However, if users went

to site sections that provided continuously updated wire news, they would find different

versions of the story that might give fresh death tolls or details about the disaster.

The inclusion of contextual elements also provides the opportunity to examine the

presentation aspect of gatekeeping. About a third of the entire sample had at least one

contextual element in common across print and online media, and Shoemaker (1991)

pointed to repetition as one sign that a story has a strong positive force to make it through

a gate. The 32% figure is, by itself, neither good nor bad. On one hand, the figure could

encourage those who have concluded that online newspapers do little but post the text of

any given story and skip elements that might have to be resized or reformatted for digital

display in order to get the elements, such as photos or infographics, ready to post online.

On the other hand, some might be discouraged by the thought that so many stories are

repeating elements from one medium to the next, possibly indicating that the newspapers

48

do not value the differences between platforms. Until journalists and users view Web

sites as more than carriers for modified print content, they have little room to grow, some

have argued (Lowrey, 1999).

Finding no relationship between reporter affiliation and contextual elements

shakes the notion that staff-written stories are guaranteed better play or display simply

because they are a unique commodity to the newspaper. It would be easy to assume that a

staff reporter’s access could translate into more photos or other elements to give context

to a story in any medium, but the average number of print contextual elements and online

photos and infoboxes that ran with staff-written stories showed no significant variance

from the mean.

A related thought about the use of contextual elements might assume that stories

about the metro area would have more elements than stories about issues and events from

greater distances away. In fact, stories about international news had the highest mean of

contextual elements published with them both in print and online. Stories about the metro

areas actually had fewer contextual elements in print on average than international,

national, or state stories, and this difference was significant. Although the number of

contextual elements with these stories was lower, more than half of the entire sample was

made of stories focusing on the geographic metro area—54.6% in print and 52.8% online.

This finding is disappointing. Many sources offer international and national news; a

person in Florida can read different perspectives and reports of the same global news

produced in Washington, New York, London, and Riyadh. The metropolitan newspaper

may be one of only a few sources that offers local news, though. Enhanced international

and national coverage make newspapers competitors with hundreds of other sources—

49

which may have more resources or more direct connections—rather than allowing them

to serve a local niche.

In ignoring their local content, newspapers are missing the point online, and they

are missing a powerful opportunity for competition. The growth of the online medium

depends on competition because only by providing a desirable commodity that will

attract an audience will online newspapers be able to attract advertisers. Advertising

revenue provides the resources to pay staff to create enhanced news content online.

Newspapers are caught in an online Catch-22: until they put some money into Web

operations, things cannot change, and until newspapers change some of their content and

delivery, hopes of making a profit on the medium seem dim. All the while, local content

languishes.

Limitations

The period of study began about three weeks after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in

New Orleans, and hurricane clean-up and recovery stories still were receiving prominent

play in newspapers across the country. However, Houston and Dallas were particularly

large centers for evacuees, and their special coverage of the disaster could have affected

the results of this study. For instance, both of these newspapers created a standing box of

online features and links that was posted with each story about Hurricane Katrina on the

Web sites. These standing boxes provided contextual content for the stories, but it was

not unique; readers saw the same content with story after story, day after day.

The Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News did the same thing for

Hurricane Rita, which directly affected three of the cities involved in this study during its

first week. The storm struck a glancing blow to the Florida Keys, which are inside

50

Miami’s coverage area, and it came ashore near Houston on September 23, sweeping up

to cities near Dallas. Houston evacuated before the hurricane, which affected newspaper

production; during one day of the study, the Chronicle did not produce a traditional metro

section, choosing instead to focus all of its local content on hurricane preparation and put

that in the front section. The special coverage leading up to and following Hurricane Rita

seemed to affect the number of front-page stories produced and the amount of online

elements available.

The purposive sample of newspapers for this study assembled a more

homogenous group of papers in terms of size and location than would be expected in a

random sample of American newspapers and their Web sites. The results of this study

cannot be generalized to the entire population but create a snapshot of these newspapers.

Another limitation includes story duplication on the Web site of the Atlanta

Journal-Constitution. The newspaper provides a prominent link to its “print edition,”

where most of the stories that ran in the paper that day are posted by section. The stories

include some contextual elements like photos and infoboxes. However, visitors to other

sections of the site might find links to the same stories—that have different contextual

features than the first online story. Rather than having one version of a story linked to

from several places, the site architecture calls for at least two versions of many stories,

which could have created a coding nightmare. However, this study consistently sampled

only one set of stories, the ones under the “print edition” link. This assured consistent

sampling, but it could have been at the expense of unique Web features for that site.

That limitation points to another difficulty of online research: particular pages can

be difficult to find within a site. The design of this study called for extensive searching

51

for a story online before determining that it appeared in print only. There is the possibility

that search efforts just did not turn up stories that did exist on the site. But if a researcher

with determined intent could not find a story, the utility of the story to a casual browser

must be questioned. In many cases, online newspaper sites are really quite a mess.

Several coding decisions complicated analysis of the data. With the exception of

online photos and infoboxes, which were coded by frequency, other online elements

simply were coded for presence or absence. Because of the great variety of types of

online elements and the many ways they could be displayed or linked from stories, the

researcher noted whether a type of element was present but not how many times it

occurred with a story. This data could not be analyzed at the same level as information

about contextual elements in print or in common between editions because these

variables were measured at the ratio level. Most of the online elements were measured at

the nominal level. Raising the coding level for the online elements variables would allow

more specific analysis and direct comparison with print elements and common elements.

Measuring the elements that were the same between versions of a story was a

fairly simple comparison that yielded exact information about the kinds of elements that

are repeated between print and online editions. However, just because a story was

counted as having elements in common did not mean the story didn’t have other

contextual elements that were unique between media.

Future research

This study points to a number of questions for future research. Whether front-

page story placement in print acts as a gate for online story selection would be a

worthwhile question. Although it intuitively makes sense that the stories chosen as the

52

most important in print also would be important online, the high percentage of print and

online overlap in this study also simply could indicate a greater percentage of stories

online overall.

It also would be interesting to examine whether the affiliations of contextual

elements’ producers—photographers, graphic artists, videographers—have any effect on

the frequency and use of these elements in print and online media.

Examining the content differences between print and online newspapers answers

the question of what is going on but not why or how. Further study of newspapers’ online

gatekeepers and gatekeeping processes is warranted. Scholars also should examine

newspapers’ commitment of resources to producing contextual elements for either

medium.

The ability of newspaper Web sites to offer readers something new with their

daily news than they would receive in the paper has advanced in the dozen or so years

that newspapers have been online. This study indicates that newspapers still have more

potential for growth than substance to many claims about content differences between

print and online newspapers. Readers are able to find a mirror of stories they see in print,

and they are more likely to find contextual elements that provide visual storytelling in

print than online. The most common online-only contextual elements are links to related

sites externally or stories internally, and even those appear in less than one-fifth of stories

online. Even though use of contextual elements with online stories is sparse compared to

print editions, it should be noted, however, that more than half of the stories online had at

least one contextual element posted with them. Even though newspaper Web sites have

been slow to embrace and use interactive and unique online features, the presence of

53

contextual elements online that do not appear in print is evidence that the print edition of

a newspaper is not always a gate to online posting. Newspapers may be making progress,

but they still have a long way to go before claiming widespread content differences

between print and online editions.

54

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Appendices

Appendix A: Print and Online Sample Articles

Print Houston Chronicle, September 19, 2005, Page A1

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Appendix A (Continued)

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Appendix A (Continued) Online Houston Chronicle, September 19, 2005

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Appendix A (Continued)

69

Appendix A (Continued)

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Appendix A (Continued) Dallas Morning News, September 19, 2005, Page B1

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Appendix A (Continued)

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Appendix A (Continued) Online Dallas Morning News, September 19, 2005

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Appendix A (Continued)

Print Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 19, 2005, Page A1

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Appendix A (Continued)

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Appendix A (Continued) Online Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 19, 2005

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Appendix A (Continued)

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Appendix A (Continued) Print St. Petersburg Times, September 19, 2005, Page A1

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Appendix A (Continued)

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Appendix A (Continued) Online St. Petersburg Times, September 19, 2005

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Appendix A (Continued) Print Miami Herald, September 19, 2005, Page A1

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Appendix A (Continued)

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Appendix A (Continued) Online Miami Herald, September 19, 2005

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Appendix B: Coding Sheet NEWS: HC DMN AJC SPT MH DATE:

PRINT ONLINE

SECT. Front Metro P. ONLY Y N

HED HED Same Different

AFFIL. Staff Wire Staff & Wire Contributor Unknown

AFFIL. Staff Wire Staff & Wire Contributor Unknown

GEOG. Int’l Nat’l State Metro GEOG. Int’l Nat’l State Metro

ELEM. Y N photos sidebars __ infographics infoboxes __ artwork other AFFIL.: Staff Wire Staff & Wire Contributor Unknown

ELEM. Y N ___ photos infoboxes ___ video audio docs ___ poll quiz i. graphic ___ blog disc. forum ___ s. graphic slideshow ___ photo gallery rel. Web links ___ rel. story links live chat ___ other _ AFFIL.: Staff Wire Staff & Wire Contributor Unknown SAME: Y N _

LEAD LEAD Same Different

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Appendix C: Coding Instructions NEWS Select newspaper and date. HC=Houston Chronicle, DMN=Dallas Morning

News, AJC=Atlanta Journal-Constitution, SPT=St. Petersburg Times, MH=Miami Herald

PRINT

SECT Select front or metro (which may be called City & State, Metro, Tampa & State, or Metro & State)

HED Write headline that appears with story. In some cases, a story may have more

than one headline, so here are some guidelines. • If a big headline acts as an umbrella over two or more stories, use the smaller headlines that appear directly over each story. • If only one story falls under the big headline, use the big one in that case, even if there is a smaller headline directly over the story. • If a small headline (like a label, such as “Disaster Relief,” or a feature headline that particularly addresses the action in the photo) is stacked on top of a picture that is stacked on top of a story that has another headline directly over it, use the headline directly over the story, not the small overline.

AFFIL Select the affiliation of the reporter. Staff, Wire=Associated Press, Reuters,

Bloomberg News, or any chain correspondent (identified with Cox, Knight-Ridder, etc.), Staff & Wire=combination of any of the above (staff writer might be listed alone in byline, but story has a footer that says wire material was used), Contributor=might be identified as a correspondent or “special to the Chronicle,” etc., Unknown

GEOG Location the story focuses on: International, National, State, Metro.

Determine this by skimming first few sentences of story. A story may have more than one geographic focus.

ELEM Identify the presence of any elements besides story text with “yes” or “no”

and place the number of each kind of element next to it. Photos=photographs or artists’ renderings that have a box around the outside. Sidebars=related stories that appear on the same page as the story or its jump. Story topics should show a strong relationship, not just two stories about the military or a hurricane. Infographics=information delivered graphically. Includes maps. Infoboxes=facts, figures, or details that support a story and appear in a box or module with the story. Artwork=includes sketches or any kind of illustration floating without a border. Other=anything else. If you choose this option, please describe the element to the right. Examples include: refer (a note directing readers to other stories in the paper or on the Web), pull quote (a

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Appendix C (Continued) quote from the story that is inset into the text in big type), or pull out (a sentence or two from the story that is inset into the text in big type).

AFFIL Select the affiliation of the photographer or artist. Staff, Wire=Associated

Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News, or any chain correspondent (identified with Cox, Knight-Ridder, etc.), Staff & Wire=combination of any of the above (staff writer might be listed alone in byline, but story has a footer that says wire material was used), Contributor=might be identified as a correspondent or “special to the Chronicle,” etc., Unknown

• If an element, particularly an infobox, does not name the person responsible for creating it, mark it as “staff” if the element appears in a staff-written story or “wire” if it appears in a wire-written story. If the element appears in a “staff & wire” story, then mark the element as “unknown” affiliation.

ONLINE

P. ONLY Does the story appear in the print edition only? If a screenshot of the story does not appear in that newspaper’s folder for that date, the answer is “yes.”

HED Note whether the primary headline on the online story is the “same” or

“different” than the print edition. Only write in the headline again if it is different.

AFFIL Select the affiliation of the reporter. Staff, Wire=Associated Press, Reuters,

Bloomberg News, or any chain correspondent (identified with Cox, Knight-Ridder, etc.), Staff & Wire=combination of any of the above (staff writer might be listed alone in byline, but story has a footer that says wire material was used), Contributor=might be identified as a correspondent or “special to the Chronicle,” etc., Unknown

GEOG Location the story focuses on: International, National, State, Metro.

Determine this by skimming first few sentences of story. A story may have more than one geographic focus.

ELEM Identify the presence of any elements besides story text with “yes” or “no”

and place the number of each kind of element next to it if it is a photo or infobox. Otherwise, simply put an “X” next to any element present, or use an “S” next to any element that appears in a standing box. A standing box would be one that appears with several related stories (such as a box labeled “DeLay indicted” or “Hurricane Rita”). Elements should appear with intent; i.e., it doesn’t count if every page of a site links to a general discussion forum in its site architecture.

Photos=photographs or artists’ renderings that have a box around the outside.

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Appendix C (Continued)

Infoboxes= facts, figures, or details that support a story and appear in a box with the story.

Video=links to video clips. Audio=links to audio clips. Docs=links to documents that were sources for the article. Poll=allows readers to vote on a question presented. Quiz=a series of questions for readers to complete. I. graphic=interactive graphic. Can the reader click or manipulate the

presentation of the data? Can include maps. Blog=either a reporter’s Weblog or a blog that readers can participate in. Disc. Forum=discussion forum or bulletin board. S. graphic=static graphic. The graphic does not update or respond to user

input. Can include maps. Slideshow=series of photos that automatically runs when clicked. Photo gallery=series of photos that must be manually run when clicked. Rel. Web links=links to related Web sites. Rel. story links=links to other related stories or coverage on that newspaper

site. Live chat=link for readers to participate in a real-time online conversation

with one another, experts and sources, or journalists. May also be a link to a transcript of a chat that is already past.

Other=anything else; please describe it to the right. Might include refer (a note but no link directing readers to other stories in the paper or on the Web) or submit photos (a feature allowing readers to send in their own photos).

AFFIL Select the affiliation of the journalist. Staff, Wire=Associated Press, Reuters,

Bloomberg News, or any chain correspondent (identified with Cox, Knight-Ridder, etc.), Staff & Wire=combination of any of the above (staff writer might be listed alone in byline, but story has a footer that says wire material was used), Contributor=might be identified as a correspondent or “special to the Chronicle,” etc., Unknown

• If an element, particularly an infobox, does not name the person responsible for creating it, mark it as “staff” if the element appears in a staff-written story or “wire” if it appears in a wire-written story. If the element appears in a “staff & wire” story, then mark the element as “unknown” affiliation.

SAME Circle “yes” or “no” to note whether any of the elements that appeared in the

Web version of the story was the same as any element that appeared in print. If “yes,” please write to the right which element was in both media, such as “photo” or “infobox.”

LEAD Circle “same” if the first paragraph of the Web story says exactly the same

thing as the print story. Circle “different” if the leads vary at all.